Field of the Invention
This invention is in the field of Internet or network connected cameras and scalable cloud computing.
Description of the Related Art
Webcams have become prevalent in modern life, and Internet server based systems that can use webcam video data, such as YouTube®, Skype® video chatting, and the like are widely known to the general population. Additionally, use of webcams and Internet servers, as well as various types of computer vision methods, for various monitoring applications is also known in the art.
As one specific example, various methods of using webcams for applications such as monitoring animal movements was described by Verstraeten et. al., “Webcams for Bird Detection and Monitoring: A Demonstration Study”, Sensors 2010, 10, 3480-3503.
Further Needham, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,803,945 described a motion detecting web camera system. This system periodically uploaded webcam images to a server depending on various types of motion capture algorithms.
In recent years, as Internet technology has advanced, it has become more feasible to provide web services that can automatically scale upon user demand, often by use of various types of
automated service provisioning methods and virtual machine migration methods. These scalable cloud services are described by Zhang et. al., “Cloud computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges”, J Internet Serv. Appl. (2010) 1: 7-18. These cloud services include Amazon EC2, Microsoft Windows Azure platform, the Google App Engine, and others.
The Amazon EC2 cloud computing platform, for example, is described by Jurg van Viled et. al., “Programming Amazon EC2”, published by O'Reilly Media, Inc., Sebastopol Calif., February 2011.
Additionally, as Internet technology has advanced, use of representational state transfer (REST) methods for the development of web services has become popular. This technology is described by Leonard Richardson & Sam Ruby, “RESTful Web Services”, published by O'Reilly Media, Inc., Sebastopol Calif., May 2007.